Wednesday, 25 March 2015

Herbie Hancock - I Thought It Was You (1978)


From the 1978 album Sunlight; Sennheiser vocoder pwns Autotune FTW. That and a mountain of talent, as well as performances by drummer Tony Williams and bassist Jaco Pastorius.
I Thought It Was You was mildly received at the time by UK jazz listeners; as a whole the album tends to lay more toward funk than a jazz record, and is reminiscent of much of the electro-funk (or boogie as it was also known) of the time.
Sunlight also marks the beginning of Herbie's 1980s electro-era style that was more refined in his later albums such as Future Shock and Sound System.

- The Oakland Stroke


Monday, 23 March 2015

Jill Scott - Golden (2004)



The first single from her second album Beautifully Human: Words and Sounds Vol. 2 released in 2004 by Hidden Beach records, an upstart record label started by veteran music industry exec Steve Mckeever.
A deceptively simple song in composition; a one-chord bassline, simple drumbeat and a repetitive chorus. Some say she repeats that line way too much but Jill Scott always has a little quirkiness to all her songs, which is how she really really pulls it off. if Ashanti or Beyoncé repeated that line everyone would probably be hitting the FFW button. But Scott's vocal style pulls it off and then some. One of her anthems.
She is due to release a new album later this year.

- The Oakland Stroke